and want of progress." The opening verses are very tender and musical: "Jesu, dulcis memoria, "Jesu, the very thought of Thee Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame, A sweeter sound than Thy blest name, A part of this same poem is given as a separate hymn, commencing Jesu dulcedo cordium; one stanza of which is singularly sweet, and in the English version perhaps possesses still greater beauty than in the original : 66 Quando cor nostrum visitas, Et intus fervet charitas." "Thy lovely presence shines so clear Through every sense and way, That souls, which once have seen Thee near, See all things else decay." Another lengthy production of St. Bernard is the Rhyth mica Oratio ad unum quodlibet membrorum Christi; a metrical address, as the title implies, to each of the members of the suffering Saviour. It contains in all three hundred and seventy lines, and is separated into stanzas of five verses, the first four of which rhyme together, as do also the fifth and tenth lines. There is a lovely German translation of the portion ad Faciem : "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden;" a version of which is found in the Moravian hymn books, beginning, "O head so full of bruises;" This is imitated in the common English hymn, "Hail! that head with sorrow bowing." The Oratio is exclamatory in its opening: "Salve mundi salutare, Salve, salve, Jesu chare, Cruci tuæ me aptare Vellem vere, tu scis quare, "Hail! Jesu! Saviour of the world! all!" The favorite portion of this poem is that addressed ad Faciem, though it does not possess so much tender feeling as the preceding part, ad Cor. Several other devotional pieces are ascribed to St. Bernard, but they are of less comparative merit than the foregoing compositions. One is entitled, Oratio devota ad Dominum Jesum et Beatum Matrem Ejus, con sisting of one hundred and fifty lines; besides, there are two rhymed fragments, De contemptu mundi, containing respectively fifty-six and one hundred and forty-one lines. The beautiful hymn to the Virgin, Ave maris stella, which is in such high repute with Roman Catholics, though attributed to St. Bernard, is supposed by Mabillon to be of greater antiquity than the twelfth century. Indeed, the latter expresses a doubt whether any of the sacred poems commonly credited to the Abbot of Clairvaux were really composed by him; and Daniel, in his Hymnology, maintains that the Jesu dulcis memoria, though it may have been polished by the saint, is not the work of his hands. No matter, however, who the author may be, it is among the choicest specimens of medieval poetry. How many of us there are who connect the name of Aquinas only with visions of fearful folios, which treat of all the untangible subtleties that puzzled the brains of schoolmen! Or perhaps a few may think of him as a grim, gaunt Dominican ogre, who contained within himself the whole Inquisition in embryo, and who would regard as a dangerous wizard any mortal so bold as to fabricate verses. Yet the Angel of the Schools, as his disciples called him, could warble as well as theorize; but his verses, like his interminable theological treatises, are known only to a limited few on this side of the ocean. One cause of this prevalent ignorance of his poems is, that the only subject on which they treat is the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; but neglecting them solely on this account, when there is so much to recommend them to our favor, would be much as if one would refuse to read Voltaire because a vein of infidelity pervades his writings. The hymns of Aquinas are particularly noted for a union of unction of language with strict theological exactness of expression; his words are well chosen, his phrases most happy, and the cadence of his verse is at once natural and sonorous. His canticles, as they are called, are four in number, of different metres and in rhyme. They derive their names from the words which begin each, Sacris Solemniis, Pange lingua, Lauda Sion, and Verbum Supernum. Santeuil said that he would willingly give all the verses he had ever written to be the author of a single strophe of this last hymn, viz.: "Se nascens dedit socium, There is a very old English translation of the Pange lingua, but it lacks the fervor and flow of the majestic original. A portion of this hymn forms part of the evening service of the Church of Rome. The other canticles, Sacris Solemniis, and Verbum Supernum, are frequently found done out of Latin, but not into English; good versions of them, however, are given in Caswall's Lyra. The Lauda Sion is the hymn by which Aquinas will always be most favorably known. In its solemn gladness, in its exultant outburst, in its sweet, sustained harmony it seems like a grand march of the Church Militant. To feel the full grace, and tenderness, and unction of this ecstatic song, we should listen to its triumphant strains swelling from thousands of voices, in some glad procession, on the continent; just as we should hear bursting forth from the splendid chorales of mystic Nürnberg the full diapason of "Ein' feste Burg," in order to comprehend the depth of sublime poetry that dwells in that Marseillaise of the Reformation. Though there may be a difference in belief as to the dogma inculcated in this hymn, all can heartily unite in the closing supplication : "Bone Pastor, panis vere,* Jesu nostri miserere; Crashaw wrote a version of this canticle, beginning "Rise, royal Zion, rise and sing, Thy soul's kind shepherd, thy heart's king;" which retains much of the spirit and melody of the original, and another good rendering is that in the Lyra Catholica. In the Franciscan convents, especially, the lyre of poesy was swayed with a most potent hand. Francis of Assisi, himself the institutor of the order, was the first Italian poet who wrote in the vernacular, and after him the mantle of song seems to have been successively inherited by many of his followers. Thomas di Celano and Jacopone da Todi would of themselves alone rescue their religious institute from the imputation of ignorance. Indeed, the Dies Ira stands alone amid the productions of the ancient and mediæval muse, unapproachable in simplicity and sublimity. * John vi, 56. The authorship of this Prosa de Mortuis has been the subject of contention oftener than that of any other hymn in the whole range of Latin poetry. It has been successively ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux, Gregory the Great, Cardinal Walter de Aquasparte, Buonaventura, and Agostino Biella; but there is little besides conjecture to support the claims of any of them. There is every reason to believe that it is the composition of Thomas di Celano, so styled from the town of that name in the Abruzzi, in which he lived, the site of the ancient Cliturnum. The original draught of the hymn was found in his possession; and Bartolomeo Pisaro says, speaking of the village of Celano: " de quo fuit Thomas, qui scripsit sermone polito Legendam primam Beati Francisci et prosam de mortuis, quæ cantatur in missa, scilicet, Dies Iræ, dies illa;" and di Celano was the friend and companion of Francis of Assisi, and is certainly known to have written his life. No other hymn has been translated so often and into so many different languages as the Dies Ira. There are more than sixty modern German versions of it, and in English we have at least half that number published. The oldest we possess is that by Crashaw; but he evidently distrusted his powers, for his translation is but little more than a very diffuse paraphrase. Still, as a translator, he certainly possessed unusual ability, for his rendering of Strada's famous Music's Duel is a masterpiece for litheness, fidelity and melody, and it is consequently strange that he caught so little of the spirit of the grand old Latin sequence, for he does not even retain the Sonorous double rhyme or the triplet of the original. Roscommon, too, translated the Prosa, and Johnson tells us that he died with two lines of it upon his lips. We think, too, that there is a version of it in the older editions of Sir Walter Scott's poems; and Dean Trench has written a rather loose imitation of it. Perhaps no hymn is so difficult to render into English as this sequence, as the failure of Crashaw and Roscommon plainly demonstrates. There is in it a sonority and stateliness arising from the full double rhymes and the profusion of vowels; there is a directness of expression and a theological force of meaning in some words, together with a simplicity and terseness in the iambic dimiter metre, which altogether render it almost impossible to infuse the peculiar spirit of the original into an English version. In the prosa there is not a single expletive-not one word could be omit ted or changed, without injuring the sense or force of the sentence; to think, then, that its beauty and grandeur could be preserved in all their force in our language, with its everrecurring consonants and dearth of double rhymes, is going beyond the region of probability. Seldom has even the opening stanza been more than tolerably rendered. Crashaw has it: "Hear'st thou my soul what serious things Of a sure judge, from whose sharp ray which surely cannot be blamed on the score of diffuseness, for he gives twice as many words, and nearly three times as many consonants, as are contained in the original. There is a marked contrast, too, in the very first word, the Hear'st of Crashaw sounding peculiarly harsh, while the Dies is full, flowing and harmonious; besides, it is no improvement to substitute interrogation for the spirit-stirring exclamation of the old Latin hymn. There is a translation by Dr. Irons, which retains the original metre, opening: "Day of wrath, O day of mourning! See once more the cross returning! He adopts, instead of the usual reading of the third line, one sometimes substituted, "Crucis expandens vexilla;" which, however, has not the beauty of the one more commonly employed. We make no apology for transcribing the greater portion of this hymn, with Caswall's translation subjoined, for it will be to the few who know it a source of renewed pleasure, and to the many who have not yet seen this splendid lyric it will be a proof of its high literary merit. "Dies Iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favilla, "Nigher still, and still more nigh Draws the Day of Prophecy, *This inattention to grammar would in our days scarcely be tolerated, even as a poetical license. |